Summary: | The paper presents an overview of prevailing pedagogic practices of social science at school level
in India. It has been sketched with the help of social science teachers’ interviews. The analysis of teachers’
interview revealed that the teaching of social science is a reflection of teacher’s own biases and beliefs;
dominated by deficit model of thinking and learning. Against this backdrop the paper tries to address the
question do we have any alternative of ‘deficit model’ of teaching learning? If yes, what is it? How it can be
designed and executed? In the present descriptive study the researcher adopts the theoretical underpinnings
of Socio-cultural approach to learning and tries to design and execute constructivist pedagogic setting for
teaching social science. It emerges from the analysis of these constructivists pedagogic settings that it helps
to develop and sustain a culture of inquiry in the classroom where the strong interface between students’
everyday knowledge and school knowledge take place. The paper establishes the argument that for moving
deficit model of teaching-learning, knowledge should be viewed as co-constructed, negotiated and situated
entity, knower should have agency and the voice in process of knowing and the process learning should be
dialogic.
|